The men drew up, and the horses shook their heads, then pricked their ears, as out of the darkness ahead came the murmur of a chant, swelling up to a deep boom, and sinking again till almost inaudible.
“They dance and make merry,” said the leader. “Ride!”
Once more the horses moved on, picking their way, while each man unslung his rifle and held it with the butt on his thigh. And louder rose that monotonous chant, mounting to the shrill notes of the women’s voices, and sinking to the menacing bass of the warrior’s deep chest notes; and presently there suddenly started out of the gloom a score of gleaming fires in a circle at the base of a vast bulk that stood for Hlobane.
“Pipes out!” said the leader. “Groot Andries, and you Dick Stoffel, and you Piet Uys, will stand here, keeping out of sight, and fire on the Zulus if they follow. The rest—ride!”
The two burghers and the boy remained, and the others filed out of sight. Slowly the time passed to these three as they crouched behind rocks, with their horses tethered in a hollow, and the cold wind of the early morning numbing their fingers and biting their poorly-clad bodies, till the grey of the dawn appeared and threw the mountain of Hlobane into relief. The singing had died away as the wind rose, the fires were dim, and the silence of the early morn was over the land.
“Look!” said Groot Andries, pointing a huge hand, and a mile off on the buttress of the mountain young Piet saw a dark mass in motion, with a few moving specks behind.
He drew his breath in sharply, and the misery left his face. “They are driving the cattle,” he said.
“Ja!” said Andries, moving in his lair to get more comfortable, and sighting along his rifle.
How quickly they come. Piet could see the gleam of tossing horns—and then he counted the riders, with his father riding last. “They have not been seen,” he whispered.
“Oh, ja!” growled Stoffel, “the verdomde folk come.”